He calls it the Alimony Tour, year three.

John Cleese’s divorce from American psychotherapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger in 2008 cost him $20million – $15m up front and $1m a year for the next five years.

So he went back on the road doing what he does best – making people laugh, to earn more money.

“That’s why I’m here trying to amuse a bunch of antique dealers and rugby fans,” he told his Bath audience, who loved the jibe.

Is he bitter? He tells the audience: “I got off lightly. Think what I’d have had to pay Alyce if she had contributed anything to the relationship – such as children, or a conversation.”

His show is a highly entertaining ramble through his life with on-screen gems from The Frost Report, Monty Python, At Last the 1948 Show, Fawlty Towers and his films.

If that sounds egotistical, it is not. He is demonstrating the talents of his friends and co-comedians as much as his own, and explaining what makes a moment of comedy work.

He talks about his parents and his early life in Weston-super-Mare – “not so much a seaside resort as a last resort” where a good life for the lower middle class “was seen as getting safely to their coffins without ever being seriously embarrassed”.

He talks with affection about his fellow Pythons, and Marty Feldman, David Frost, the two Ronnies, Barker and Corbett, with whom he performed the much loved ‘class’ sketch and not least about his first wife Connie Booth, with whom he co-wrote Fawlty Towers.

He also reminisces about the glorious days at the BBC in the Sixties and Seventies when creativity was allowed free rein. We have the legacy of richly anarchic comedy as a result.

Cleese is resident in Bath until Saturday. Go help this icon pay his alimony.